Now that Skype is finally free from eBay and getting ready to do an IPO as an independent company, the company is planning a major expansion.

It wants to hire 350 new employees this year, growing its headcount by about 50%. Most of the new hires will be engineers, and a lot of them will focus on improving Skype for business use and on mobile phones.

Hiring good engineers isn't easy with the talent war going on in Silicon Valley, and an important element of recruiting is having a cool place to work.

Skype's California offices were spread between two makeshift locations, including an old house on the eBay campus in San Jose. So last year it scouted locations up and down Silicon Valley, and finally decided on a Palo Alto building that had recently been vacated by VMware. Skype gutted it and redesigned it from scratch, then moved in December.

The space is still mostly empty, with lots of room to expand, but it looks like a pretty sweet place to work.

The lobby sets the tone with a high-definition TV screen -- they're all over the place inside.